or wait for them
to come and drink. The brush is so small you ain't got much chance. I
run onto a she-bear and cubs that way once. Didn't have nothin' but my
six-shooter, and I met her within six foot."

He stopped with an air of finality.

"Well, what did you do?" we asked.

"Me?" he inquired, surprised. "Oh, I just leaked out of th' landscape."

He prospected the mountain opposite, loafed with us a little, and then
decided that he must be going. About eight o'clock in the morning he
passed us, hazing his burros, his tall, lean figure elastic in defiance
of years.

"So long, boys," he called; "good luck!"

"So long," we responded heartily. "Be good to yourself."

He plunged into the river without hesitation, emerged dripping on the
other side, and disappeared in the brush. From time to time during the
rest of the morning we heard the intermittent tinkling of his
bell-animal rising higher and higher above us on the trail.

In the person of this man we gained our first connection, so to speak,
with the Golden Trout. He had caught some of them, and could tell us
of their habits.

Few fishermen west of the Rockies have not heard of the Golden Trout,
though, equally, few have much definite information concerning it.
Such information usually runs about as follows:

It is a medium size fish of the true trout family, resembling a rainbow
except that it is of a rich golden color. The peculiarity that makes
its capture a dream to be dreamed of is that it swims in but one little
stream of all the round globe. If you would catch a Golden Trout, you
must climb up under the very base of the end of the High Sierras.
There is born a stream that flows down from an elevation of about ten
thousand feet to about eight thousand before it takes a long plunge
into a branch of the Kern River. Over the twenty miles of its course
you can cast your fly for Golden Trout; but what is the nature of that
stream, that fish, or the method of its capture, few can tell you with
any pretense of accuracy.

To be sure, there are legends. One, particularly striking, claims that
the Golden Trout occurs in one other stream--situated in Central
Asia!--and that the fish is therefore a remnant of some pre-glacial
period, like Sequoia trees, a sort of grand-daddy of all trout, as it
were. This is but a sample of what you will hear discussed.

Of course from the very start we had had our eye on the Golden Trout,
and intended sooner or la